Monthly Archives: May 2015

Security Guarantees

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Several Arab states, members of the Gulf Security Council, are looking for

major new weapons systems and security guarantees from the White House in exchange for backing a nuclear agreement with Iran, according to US and Arab officials.

There are a lot of valid arguments on both sides of that question in The Wall Street Journal article at the link (RTWT), but one thing jumps out at me, and it wasn’t addressed in the article.

Suppose the GSC nations get those security guarantees and promises of delivery of those weapons systems. On what basis do they think this administration would deliver on those commitments?

This administration pulled the rug out from under Poland and Czech Republic on missile defense systems. This administration pulled the rug out from under Ukraine, refusing to send them the equipment they need to defend themselves. This administration refused to take meaningful action against the Assad régime in Syria after painting a bright red line around the use of chemical weapons. This administration pulled the rug out from under Israel in the PA’s terror war against Israel just last summer. This administration currently is pulling the rug out from under Israel in agreeing to a framework that lets Iran obtain nuclear weapons.

A commitment to those Arab nations regarding security and weapons would be just another line this administration would shy away from in the moment of truth.

Foolishness

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Or something. President Barack Obama, through his Press Secretary Josh Earnest, says that helping with a ransom payment isn’t paying ransom.

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the FBI helped the family of Warren Weinstein make a ransom payment to his al-Qaeda captors by vetting a Pakistani middleman who helped deliver the money.

Here’s Obama, through Earnest:

Speaking generally, helping with a ransom payment…is not tantamount to paying a ransom….

Yeah. And my grandson isn’t pulling the cat’s tail; he’s just holding on. The cat is doing the pulling.

The SEC’s Abuse of Authority

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Actually, it’s Dodd-Frank’s abuse, and the SEC is only implementing the abuser’s requirement, but still….

At issue here is an SEC proposed rule that purports

to give investors greater clarity about the link between what corporate executives are paid each year compared to total shareholder return—the annual change in stock price plus reinvested dividends, according to people familiar with the measure.

There are a couple of things wrong with this. One, minor on the scale of this…rule’s…transgression is the idea that stock price and dividend handling are the measure of a business’ management. No, these are the outcomes; the actual measures are on the business’ financial sheets. Those P&L, Cash Flow, and Balance Sheets, among a host of other performance reporting documents, are freely available to shareholders—and to prospective shareholders: they’re public documents.

The larger problem, though, is this: the executives’ performance is the business of the shareholders, not the government. This is just a backdoor effort to insinuate government deeper into the management of private businesses.

Dodd-Frank needs to be repealed, and D-F-related SEC (and others’) rules rescinded as soon as this administration can be replaced.

Choices

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The Air Force says that if an amendment to the defense funding bill that extends the operational life of the A-10 makes it into the final budget, it’ll have to mothball a bunch of F-16s or maybe delay deployment of the F-35.

The F-35 is overpriced and undercapabled. I vote for delaying that—or cancelling it altogether.

Or a choice not currently on the table: the F-22 is even more overpriced than the F-35, and it’s even less capable; albeit it’s less capable in an air-to-air environment rather than the A-10’s or F-35’s air-to-mud milieu. Cancel that albatross, too.